The Difference Between Writing Content for a Website and a Blog

Site Content and the Stage of the Buying Cycle

There are Two Types of Website Visitors at Different Stages in the Buying Cycle

Our friends at Orbit Media in Chicago posted an awesome Infographic that illustrates the difference between writing content for a website and a blog based on visitor intent and where they are in the buying cycle.

I alluded to this in a previous post, but it’s so good and so important that I wanted to share. (There is also another content lesson in their post that I will share later. (See Getting Traffic from Inbound Links below.)

There are 2 types of search terms; Questions or Informational and Answers or Transactional. This reflects buyer intent and how your content should be developed.

There are 2 types of content; blog posts or articles and product or services pages.

Leading to 2 types of visitor characteristics that you can evaluate in Google Analytics by comparing the percentage of new users, Bounce Rate, time on page, pages per visit, etc.

Resulting in success at the top and bottom of your sales funnel: Awareness and Action.

Most website owners fail to understand any of the audience characteristics of their visitors, and filtering between the two intents yields much better results and a higher website ROI.

Moreover, most web queries are “Informational” according to research done last year at Penn State. 80% of searches come from people looking for information, which suggests that blog content should be a big element of your content strategy.

The Penn State study found that 10% of all searches are “Transactional” or people looking to buy.

The remaining 10% of Internet searches are “Navigational,” people looking for a specific website.

Focus on Informational content to get them in your funnel.

Advanced Website Content Strategy

In this series of articles on writing content for a website, we have gone beyond simply writing the words that appear on the page, because the content includes so much more. The biggest obstacle to building a successful website is creating content that attracts the right visitors and converts them to buyers. For website, you need to have an intuitive site hierarchy with concise navigation labels that help your visitors find the content and solutions they are looking for. Start with a plan!

For blogs, the use of categories and tags help filter your content in a way that helps your visitors find answers. It pays to have a plan like an Editorial Calendar, which is a key component of a website success strategy.

Before you begin writing site content, you need to understand who your target audiences are and what their needs are. Most websites and blogs have more than one Target Audience, thus the difference between writing content for a website and a blog, so your content needs to be developed with them in mind.

Once your plan is in place and you begin curating and creating, it’s important to chunk website content, which includes engaging headlines, bullet points and pictures that are worth 1,000 words.

Each page should include a Call To Action, whether its offering something for sale or download, opting in to an email list, engaging in social media or linking to the next step in your carefully crafted funnel.

Attracting people with a blog post that answers the visitor’s search intent and links to an appropriate product or service page can be amazingly effective. Onsite linking is one of the most-overlooked and underused tactics for website owners.

Getting Traffic From Inbound Links

We’ll write more about getting links to your website soon, but as I alluded to at the top of this article, the Orbit post has another lesson for us to understand. Using Infographics is effective because so many people like graphical content instead of or in addition to text content.

They made the graphic Pinnable, which means it can easily be found on countless Pinterest accounts and linking back to their blog post. Links from Pinterest shares are no longer “dofollow” unfortunately, but the more pins and repins you get introduce your content to an audience of people who might have the same interests.

Pro Tip: Scroll down to the bottom of the Orbit post and see their offer to let you share their infographic. Just copy and paste the code into your blog! (As I have done here.) The result? A “dofollow” link back to their article.

Your competitors aren’t doing this, so this would give you a strategic advantage!